


Jail Receipts, Joints, and Drink Tickets

by faroffsmoke



Category: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Family, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Implied Relationships, Love, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25902556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faroffsmoke/pseuds/faroffsmoke
Summary: Abe Weissman surveyed the flowers Lenny Bruce had somehow managed to send his daughter from the grave. Apparently in his will he’d left Miriam an umbrella, sent with a bouquet of pink roses and a note dated May, 1966.Abe and Midge remember Lenny Bruce.
Relationships: Lenny Bruce (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)/Miriam "Midge" Maisel
Comments: 26
Kudos: 105





	Jail Receipts, Joints, and Drink Tickets

Abe Weissman surveyed the flowers Lenny Bruce had somehow managed to send his daughter from the grave. Apparently in his will he’d left Miriam an umbrella, sent with a bouquet of pink roses and a note dated May, 1966.

Dear Upper West Side,  
I’ll always stand outside your play dates. Even in the rain. Even if someday never comes.  
Love,  
Lenny

The flowers and umbrella were now sitting on Miriam’s bedroom window sill, next to their recipient. Miriam had been there all evening, ever since Lenny’s lawyer dropped off the package.

Abe didn’t know what to do with this still and silent version of his daughter. Miriam was usually so vibrant. She specialized in making even the saddest stories funny—probably a byproduct of beginning her standup career the night her husband left. But Miriam hadn’t performed at a club since Lenny’s death. Tonight she hadn’t even come to supper.

“Talk to her,” Rose had said, but Abe didn’t know what to say.

He wanted to ask what Lenny Bruce had meant by “someday,” or how his daughter had come to know this infamous comedian so well he signed his card with love, or why he’d sent her an umbrella as a parting gift.

Instead, he fished the hat box out of his closet, where he kept tokens of Miriam’s career, brought it to her room, and opened the lid. The object on the very top was a jail receipt.

“Did you know Lenny and I were arrested together once?” Abe asked his daughter, “Your mother had to bail us out.”

Miriam didn’t respond, but she did tear her eyes away from the windowsill, which, as far as Abe could tell, was an improvement over the last two hours, so he continued.

He told Miriam about seeing Lenny’s set, which had been in defense of dirty movies, the nearly naked Ms. December magazine photo, Lenny’s critique of the obscenity law, and his final question: “what’s wrong with appealing to the prurient interest?”. Abe recalled Lenny’s arrest mid-set, explaining that while he disapproved of the comedian's vulgarity, he admired that Lenny called out repression, even as the cops stood by.

“He had the right to say what he said,” Abe justified, “I told that to the police and they arrested me too.”

Miriam listened with interest and the faint quirk of a small smile. When Abe had finished lamenting that Lenny Bruce somehow managed to be a revolutionary in a suit and tie, while Abe worried he’d turned into a sweater-wearing sellout, Miriam confessed, much to Abe’s surprise, “When Lenny told me that story he said even though you were a two sweater sort of guy, you ended up being a pal, which was high praise from Lenny Bruce.”

She contemplated the jail receipt Abe had handed her, adding, “He said you reminded him of me.”

Abe suspected that was high praise too.

That Miriam and Abe were alike was not something he had often been told. There was a time Abe wouldn’t have believed it—his comedian daughter, who played late night clubs swearing like a sailor, talking about sex and women’s rights. He thought of himself as an intellectual and an activist, someone with a serious profession that impacted society for the better. It had taken him a long time to realize comedy was a serious profession too—that jokes could change the world. Miriam’s social commentary didn’t come from lectures in university classrooms or conversations in Parisian cafés, like Abe’s did. Her critiques were punch lines that made people laugh as much as it made them question the status quo. Perhaps that was why she had apparently gotten along so well with Lenny Bruce.

“I thanked him for the flowers,” Abe remembered, “I told Lenny you said he was the real deal, one of the best. Do you know what he said?”

Miriam shook her head.

“He said you were better.”

There hadn’t been any hint of a joke in Lenny’s voice, just respect, and something else, something tender that Abe couldn’t quite name, or perhaps, at the time, didn’t want to.

Miriam considered this, “We were equals. It seems like Susie and I had to convince the whole damn industry that women could be comics too, but never Lenny.”

“I saw you two perform together once,” Abe commented. If there was ever a time to tell her, it was now. Rose had said to talk, so talk Abe would, “at the Gaslight, right after his obscenity trial.”

Rose had been with friends for the evening, Joel had the kids, and Abe had been without plans, until he remembered Miriam had said she’d be performing at the Gaslight.

Before that night Abe had never been to the Gaslight. Rose and Abe sometimes went to Miriam’s sets at classier New York venues, or they would plan family vacations around her tours (Rose could be persuaded to attend almost any comedy club as long as it was in Paris). But Miriam never pressed them to join her at the Gaslight.

From her occasional stories about drunken heckling, Abe suspected the Gaslight was something like the dingy bars of his youth, places he generally did not like to revisit because they brought back the feeling of perpetual hangovers. But that night, Abe had been feeling nostalgic, even for a hangover, so he’d spontaneously taken a cab downtown. If he couldn’t relive his glory days, at least he could watch his daughter live hers.

Her name was in the marquee out front (a recent purchase by Susie): “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” in bright pink letters. Looking back, Abe found it strange that Lenny’s name hadn’t been beside Miriam’s. Individually they always drew big crowds, together, they would have overpacked the house. Susie never missed an opportunity like that.

Miriam seemed to read Abe’s mind, “It was a last minute thing. I called him up to see if he wanted to do a set with me at the Gaslight. No one but Susie knew Lenny was going to be there.”

She plucked a pink flower from the bouquet, twirling it between her fingers, “Lenny’s manager wanted him to stay away from comedy for a while because of the court appeal. But it was Lenny, so all you could hope for was lying low till the press quieted down. Not performing was killing him. I thought, why not? Susie paid two kids to stand outside and watch for the police.”

“You were good together.”

Abe had known Miriam was good at what she did, “one of the best” according to the newspapers. He’d even grudgingly admitted that Lenny’s provocations had their points. Together, their comedy softened. The crude humor and biting critiques often present in their individual acts gave way to affectionate banter. They spun the story of their friendship into a bizarre and winding tail of jail receipts, joints, and drink tickets. They laughed together, never truly at the other’s expense, never alone. Together they had chemistry. They played off of each other, riffing the whole night, completely unrehearsed and still brillant. It seemed like they could go on forever and neither they nor their audience would tire.

“Watching you on stage that night, I thought, this isn’t at all what I imagined for you, but it’s also all I ever wanted you to have,” Abe confessed.

Miriam looked startled.

“It was your name in lights,” Abe said, “all those people came to see you shine. You were doing what you’re good at, what made you happy, surrounded by people who loved you for you.”

Abe knew audiences adored Miriam. He’d seen how they hung onto her every word and how skillfully she controlled a room. And he knew Susie loved Miriam on and off stage, in her gruff way—standing on the sidelines of every gig. But it wasn’t until that night at the Gaslight Abe realized Lenny loved her too. That, while the tender something in his voice in the jail cell all those years ago may not quite have been love then, it certainly was now.

The casual observer might have watched their whole set and come away with the impression that Mrs. Maisel and Lenny Bruce were just two comedians who saw each other at gigs for a laugh and a drink, colleagues who bailed each other out of jail in professional solidarity. The more intimate moments of their act played off as a joke: Lenny, “I love this woman very much, almost as much as I love myself,” and Miriam volleying back “You are my husband, or possibly my brother.”

What struck Abe is what they did not say. Most of Miriam’s standup was filled with embarrassingly personal stories about herself and the people in her life: Joel’s affair, Abe’s exercise routine in the Catskills, Rose getting drunk at a Shy Baldwin concert. But, aside from a speculatory bit about what “Comedian Lenny Bruce” might be like at home, Miriam revealed almost nothing about what Lenny was actually like off stage or out of jail. And Lenny did the same for her. Abe noticed a few times when one of them would seem to switch directions: a late night in Miami after a television taping cut short and nearly imperceptibly redirected into a completely different bit.

“I was, wasn’t I?” Miriam asked, “surrounded by people who loved me?”

The comment seemed to remind her of something, “I was backstage when Lenny performed on the Steve Allen Show."

Abe suspected his daughter was about to tell him a story she’d left out of her one-time double act with Lenny Bruce.

“Lenny did this bit about a man who’d just been left by his wife,” Miriam explained, “He made it a song about being better off alone. It was funny and heartbreaking, because he was talking about himself, and, I realized watching him, about me too. I didn’t want a second marriage or three kids before thirty. I wanted to be on stage, touring and performing. And that meant I was going to spend the rest of my life alone. But the thing is, I was never really all alone as long as I had Lenny to be alone with. And now he’s gone, and for the first time in my life I feel all alone.”

Abe was about to protest, but Miriam beat him to it, “I know I’m not all alone because I still have Susie and you, Mama and the kids, even Joel. But it was different with Lenny.”

Abe could not deny that. It had been a shocking revelation for Abe, in the aftermath of his arrest, to discover that Lenny Bruce seemed to understand Abe’s daughter better than he did. Or, at least, he knew her in a different way. To Lenny, Miriam had always been and would always be a comedian, like him. The thought had been oddly comforting to Abe—knowing that Miriam had someone who accepted her and respected her and, apparently, saw her for who she had probably always been. Despite the arrests and the colorful language and the magazine pictures of Ms. December, Lenny Bruce seemed like a good friend to his daughter. And, if the note attached to the first bouquet of flowers was anything to go by, Miriam must have been a good friend to Lenny too.

Now there was a new bouquet of pink flowers; a new note, this time signed with love and accompanied by an umbrella. Abe had never heard of anyone gifting a used umbrella as a present. But then again, Lenny was unconventional.

“You loved him differently,” Abe acknowledged. He wasn’t quite sure of the nature of his daughter’s relationship with Lenny Bruce. He wouldn’t pretend to understand it, but he knew it was irreplaceable.

“He must have written this right after the last time we saw each other,” Midge fingered Lenny’s note, “He came to my gig in Los Angeles. I’d told him there would be television producers in the audience. I was worried about bombing in front of them, so he came. We always did that for each other, showed up at gigs for moral support.”

Miriam launched into the backstory of this tradition, which included how she came to be backstage at the Steve Allen Show. She’d run into Lenny at a bar before his appearance. Chicago had a warrant out for his arrest because of some things he’d said during a set and he was feeling sorry for himself.

“He said he felt like Sisyphus, wondering if comedy was worth pushing the boulder up the mountain over and over again,” Miriam mimed the motion, “So, I told him how scared Ethan had been going to his first play date, how I’d promised to stand outside his friend’s house the whole time, how it rained and I stayed. I asked Lenny if he wanted me to stand outside his play date too. He told me to bring an umbrella.”

“So that’s what he meant," Abe murmured, thinking of Lenny's note: I’ll always stand outside your play dates. Even in the rain. Even if someday never comes.

“That’s what he meant.”

“And what about ‘someday’?” Abe asked gently.

“It was a bit of a joke between us,” she said, “or maybe a promise. He was saying he’d always be there for me, no strings attached.”

Miriam surveyed the objects laid out on her window sill.

“Now the joke just seems morbid, the promise is broken, and all I have left of Lenny Bruce is an umbrella, a bouquet of flowers that will die too, and a note he never meant to send.”

“That’s not all you have,” said Abe. He rummaged around in the hat box and pulled out the vinyl record he kept at the very bottom. On the protective sleeve was written in Abe’s neat cursive: “Mrs. Maisel and Lenny Bruce, the Gaslight, January 1965.”

“Holy shit,” Miriam breathed.

She took the record out of Abe's hands, holding it like the precious and breakable thing that it was.

“Susie was so mad that no one thought to record our set. Where did you get this?”

“Some kids in the back were recording it. Probably wanted to sell the copies, but...” Abe shrugged, “I thought you should be the one to decide if anyone outside that room ever got to hear it, not some kids looking to make a buck.”

“So you bought it from them?”

“Paid a pretty penny too.”

“This is the only copy?”

“The only one.”

They sat there for a while, just looking at it—this silent object that held the only record of their voices together.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give it to you earlier,” Abe said finally, “I guess I didn’t know how to tell you I was there.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The truth was, Abe had realized that night what he had suspected after his arrest with Lenny Bruce—Miriam occupied a world he would never be a part of. A world where Lenny Bruce was a real person to know and love, not just a larger-than-life figure on the stage or your television set. A world where his daughter was Mrs. Maisel and it meant a completely different thing than it did when she was Joel’s wife.

Perhaps he should have realized earlier, the moment he saw Miriam perform for the first time. Or when Lenny Bruce sent her flowers, not to woo her, but as a “thank you” to his friend and colleague who had been there for him when, both shockingly and unsurprisingly, he turned out not to be invincible. Or when Abe had been arrested with the same Lenny Bruce, who was not above the law, even if the law was wrong. When people besides Susie started saying that Mrs. Maisel was going to be a legend.

“I didn’t want to intrude,” he said at last, which was close enough to the truth.

“I did want a memento to take away though.” Abe nodded toward the record.

“I can’t believe you kept all this stuff,” Miriam riffled through some pamphlets in the hat box.

“I was very proud of you Miriam,” Abe said, “I am very proud.”

Miriam regarded him for a moment, clearly touched. She still looked sad, but a little less weary, a little less like she and Sisyphus and Lenny Bruce were the only three people holding her world up. Miriam rose from the window sill to put the record on the player.

“Would you like to listen to it with me?”

At first, all you could hear besides the scratch of the needle on vinyl were the applause, and then Miriam’s voice above the crowd, “Good evening ladies and gentleman! I have a wonderful surprise for you tonight, but it might get me arrested.” She had paused for laughs, and then an-almost serious note entered her voice, “But, there are some things worth getting arrested for.”

Abe had watched as Lenny Bruce appeared in the doorway just off the Gaslight’s stage. He had looked as tired as Sisyphus, Abe thought now, as if that boulder he’d been pushing for years was about to crush him. Abe had wondered then if the criminal conviction would ruin his career. He found himself hoping it wouldn’t. Not if Miriam could help it, he realized, watching her gesture towards Lenny, seeing the crowd notice him for the first time, the sound of the room erupting in renewed applause.

“Years ago,” Miriam had continued when they had quieted, “when it looked like I’d be blackballed from comedy, a friend of mine did for me what is practically unheard of in this business, ‘It’s called a very nice thing.’”

Her voice lowered when she said it, mimicking Lenny Bruce’s distinct cadence, clearly quoting him. Abe watched Lenny laugh along with the audience. He had rarely seen him really laugh before. Comedians didn’t often break on stage.

“This friend played a gig right here at the Gaslight so I could open for him,” Miriam continued, “Tonight, I’m going to return the favor.”

She nodded to the man in the door, as if it wasn’t already clear who she was talking about, “Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming my friend, the great comedian, Lenny Bruce!”

Lenny Bruce walked inside the Gaslight, into the spotlight, onto the stage, and into Miriam’s outstretched arms. It was a brief hug, but they held each other close. Miriam said something indistinguishable into Lenny’s ear that made him chuckle.

Abe had felt like he was intruding on a private moment—a ridiculous thought, he knew. They were on stage after all, in front of an audience, performing. But for just a moment, the space in between when Miriam squeezed and Lenny let go, Abe saw the mirage of Mrs. Maisel and Lenny Bruce slip away. Abe was never sure if it was a trick of the light, but he thought he saw Lenny mouth, “thank you,” before Miriam, nodding almost imperceptibly, leaned into the microphone, game face back on.

“I hear you're out on bail.”

And Abe knew he wasn’t imagining the softness in Lenny’s eyes when he looked over at Miriam, smiling slightly behind the hand cupped over his face. Lenny had shrugged as if unconcerned by the trial to which she was referring, and then, he too stepped up to the mic.

“As your father told me when we were arrested together, ‘Gandhi went to jail. Galileo died under house arrest. Emma Goldman was deported’. But me?” he paused for laughs, “I’m just a comic.”

**Author's Note:**

> “what’s wrong with appealing to the prurient interest?” is a quote from Lenny Bruce in season 3 ep. 1 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
> 
> “I love this woman very much, almost as much as I love myself,” and “You are my husband, or possibly my brother," references dialogue in season 3 ep 5 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
> 
> "It’s called a very nice thing." is a quote from Lenny Bruce in season 1 ep. 8 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
> 
> "Gandhi went to jail. Galileo died under house arrest. Emma Goldman was deported," is a quote from Abe Weissman in season 3 ep 1 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.


End file.
